Needs and Rights

We have been emphatic in the past that the topic of our show is not guns.  We do this as a bit of a running gag because of the name of our podcast.  The theme of our show is Christian commentary.  However, that theme is wide enough to allow for a wide variety of topics to be discussed, including the topic of guns.  It's an interesting and important topic, so it has and will likely come up in our episodes and writings.  I had an interview with a philosopher about gun rights and this article is going to be about guns.

In this article, I want to address a particular argument or phrase that people who are for more gun control like to say.  This is an argument/phrase that more sophisticated defenders of gun control probably don't use, but I do see it frequently in the popular-level discourse on social media or protests.  Because of this, I like to call it a "meme-argument."  The phrase, or question depending on how the person says it, is basically "Why do you need this?!"  There isn't really an argument here, but there are implicit premises and conclusions in there if you think about them or draw them out.  Defenders of more gun restrictions (or complete gun bans) will talk about features of certain guns, like the AR-15, and say that there is no reason to have a gun like that because you don't need those features for whatever purpose.  The question is: What conclusion is supposed to be drawn from this?  For this post, I'm going to focus on the AR-15 since that's the gun I usually see being referred to when I hear this.

First, we need to figure out what they mean when they say that we don't need an AR-15 because of whatever features it has.  Are they saying 1) that we shouldn't have that gun or are they saying 2) that the gun is unnecessary, so there's no reason to have one?

The conclusion of (1) does not follow.  The fact that something is not needed has no bearing on whether or not it should be legal to obtain or whether or not is it moral to own.  If you want to argue those conclusions, you need to do more work than that.

If they mean (2), that its unnecessary, then I agree, but that doesn't mean that the gun isn't sufficient.  What I mean by this is that, yes, you do not need an AR-15 over other guns.  You could have a shotgun, a glock, a beretta, or any number of other guns.  However, the AR-15, like any other gun, still does the trick.  It still does what a person who wants a gun wants the gun to do: it provides a means of self-defense and recreation.  So, the fact that an AR-15 is unnecessary does not mean there is no reason to own one.

This article is not an all-out refutation of arguments for more gun control.  I am showing that this meme-argument, like all others, is insufficient to give any good reason for that viewpoint.  People at the popular level, even on social media, need to give more comprehensive and relevant arguments for their position that require more context and critical thought.  In the case of the phrase that I have talked about and its implicit argument, it does nothing to show that the AR-15 should be banned or that there should be more gun restrictions.  It also does nothing to address the positive arguments for less gun restriction based on a person's right to defend his or her life from danger.

Listen to the interview I linked above for the arguments for less gun ownership restrictions.